Feel this real forever
Saltburn is still with us, influencing watching and listening choices. Let's bake a beautiful summer cake with fresh cherries. We'll go to a feral but fantastic Foo Fighters show.
Welcome to All The Songs. We use “soundtrack” as a verb here.
Listening
After seeing her in Saltburn, I’ve been on a Rosamund Pike kick. I listened to the fictional podcast series People Who Knew Me where she plays a woman who faked her own death in 9/11.
I also listened to the audiobooks of Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice and Sense & Sensibility that Pike narrates with the lively performance of a talented voice actress.
Reading
The cosiest mystery I’ve ever encountered is The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Japanese writer Hisashi Kashiwai. It follows a father / daughter detective team who work out of a diner in Kyoto to help customers recreate dishes they have eaten in the past. Tonkatsu, udon and other meals are cooked to perfection to help customers recall forgotten tastes they’ve searched for, tied to meaningful memories.
“The colour. The zestiness. The crunch! I can only describe it as magic. It’s exactly the sushi I had fifty years ago,” a happy customer swoons while munching on mackerel sushi. A charming book.
Watching
I exclusively watch films featuring Barry Keoghan these days: Saltburn, again; the chilling psychological thriller based on Greek myth, The Killing Of A Sacred Deer; and The Batman where he pops up in the final moments playing The Joker. More please.
Cooking
I baked a cherry cake for a family dinner to celebrate my step-daughter’s 7th birthday, light with almond flour and juicy with fresh cherries I pitted by hand. I used The Caker’s blueberry nectarine cake recipe but simply swapped the fruit for cherries. The only icing I used was mascarpone mixed with blended fresh cherries - not too sweet.
Everyone I’ve Ever Loved & All The Songs That Remind Me Of Them
For this memoir-by-playlist project, I write 500 words on my memories of a song. These vignettes offer a glimpse in to the rich and varied emotions we all experience in our lifetimes through showing a brief slice of my life at a particular time, in how I relate to a certain song. What the music brings up might be shallow or it could be intense. The memory may be joyful or thick with sorrow, a reflection on pleasure or a heavy exploration of fear. Whatever emotions a song dredges up from the spectrum of human feeling, they are true.
I remember snippets alongside songs. This is the soundtrack to my life. Let me be clear: Everyone I’ve Ever Loved & All The Songs That Remind Me Of Them is not a curated selection of the coolest songs I want to associate myself with. Some of them are my jam, others are trashy and catchy - all manner of music has been part of my life.
This project invites the reader to consider, where does this song take you? What does it remind you of? Where were you in your life when you last listened to this track?
‘My Hero’ by Foo Fighters
Before we go to the Foo Fighters concert, I need to buy tampons. On the way to Woolworths, I listen to ‘Everlong’ and think how brilliant and satisfying the drumming is, then put on ‘My Hero’.
I am dressed moshpit-ready: jeans, t shirt, sneakers, phone in one pocket, bus card and ID and Eftpos card in the other pocket. No bag. Contact lenses instead of glasses. No earrings, no bracelets. I’m ready to get shoved around. I’m used being in the thick of a rock concert crowd and I know to expect to be eye level to the armpits of men around me. I know beer will be spilled on my clothes. I know my hair will smell of the fruity chemical smoke of other people’s toxic vapes.
At the bus stop, my husband-to-be has his prescription sunglasses on and his clear prescription glasses tucked in to the collar of his t shirt. When the sun goes down he’ll swap the polarised dark lenses for his regular glasses. “You like living on the edge,” I tell him, expecting he’ll lose one pair in the crush and heave of the crowd. A car drives past blasting ‘My Hero’ loud. “They must be going to the show, too.”
I check my email on the bus. The only new messages are from my insurance company and Audible. I can’t believe I’m going to get to see one of the guys from Nirvana play, I think, as Wellington harbour comes in to view.
Walking to the stadium, I overhear a guy say the show is going to be “fucking awesome”. I see someone wearing a Red Hot Chili Peppers t shirt. I smell weed already. I hate drugs. I see someone in a Soundgarden t shirt, someone else in a Midnight Oil shirt. There are several dudes in Guns N Roses shirts. I count four different styles of Nirvana shirts. My husband-to-be is wearing a Björk t shirt bought at the Tokyo show we attended together. There’s a woman with her Witchery L t shirt inside out, someone in a Beastwars t shirt. In line for the bathroom, I see a woman in a Purple Rain shirt and want to tell her it’s cool.
The Breeders are the opening act. On stage, Kim Deal is wearing a Captain Jean Luc Picard t shirt.
A woman in front of us pulls down her shorts, squats and urinates directly on the ground in the middle of the crowd. Three guys to our left are taking bumps of cocaine, so I move away from them. ‘My Hero’ starts playing and a group of men put their arms around each other as they sing along. On stage Dave Grohl’s face is puffy but he’s not overweight, just ageing. My mind wanders and I think about getting a tattoo of the milk bottle from Blur’s music video for ‘Coffee & TV’. I smell more weed and wish I were Victorian, lavender smelling salts in my pocket to mask unpleasant scents.
‘Push’ by Matchbox 20
This downstairs room is the most peaceful place in our new house. At the ground level of the 1960s weatherboard home, there is a the garage door on the right, and on the left is our front door. It leads to a small office with French doors that open on to a dark patch of sunless yard under the balcony above. The office is where we keep the computer with the internet. It is 1997 and the only place you can get the internet in the house is on this hulking desktop box of a PC. It is dial up, noisy and slow.
I am left alone in this room.
My bedroom upstairs shares a wall with a toilet on one side, and mum and Keri’s room on the other. They have just moved in together recently after talking about it for a while. I have just turned 13.
In the office, I can escape everything. My friends and the dynamic web of our social network shrinks away, I no longer need to worry about my place in the crew or how everyone we know feels about everyone else we know today. School is non-existent here. I pass through it with minimal commitment, focusing on my friends and completing minimal schoolwork but not interested in participating any more than is absolutely necessary.
When I get home from school I walk straight to the office and shrug off my blue Jansport backpack. It lands on the carpeted floor with a dull thud. I abandon my shoes on the floor also and sit at the computer, pushing in the big button to start it up. My online journal is what I put my effort in to every afternoon. I record the day an make space, from a distance, to think through in words what is going on.
It takes a while to get going and be ready to use. I wriggle the mouse until the arrow jumps to life once all the background processes have settled. With an errrrrrrr sound, the CD receptacle slides open and I put my copy of Matchbox 20’s Yourself Or Someone Like You in. This album works through themes of isolation and feeling like an outsider. Fast drums break the silence. Guitars quickly join the sound and the flat energy I’ve dragged home from school lifts. I wish the real world would just stop hassling me.
As an adult I’ll get to spend my life like this. I’ll work at a computer. My headphones can stay on for most of the day to provide a soundtrack to my internal world, and the thinking I do will earn me money. This peaceful, reflective space is something I can have everyday. Even when work is busy and deadlines are tight, I can put on my headphones and find enjoyment in the moment. The music will help me get the work done faster. It lightens and clears my thoughts. I don’t know that yet when I’ve just turned 13.
A note on the Foo Fighters show
During ‘Monkey Wrench’, some ass-hat spat out their chewing gum and it landed in my hair. I had to cut it out with scissors when I got home.
Both the prescription sunglasses and regular glasses made it home safe.
Previous instalments of Everyone I’ve Ever Loved & All The Songs That Remind Me of Them
Thank you for reading! Jazial x